Collision

He reached the store’s loading docks, hung back in the shadows for a moment. He kept the knife up his shirtsleeve, ready to drop into his hand. A young man wheeled an armoire into a delivery truck, came back out onto the dock and then steered his dolly through another door. Now the back of the truck was empty, the driver conferring off to the side with a co-worker holding a tablet PC, tapping at the screen and shaking his head at his companion, then laughing good-naturedly.

Jackie stepped into the back of the truck, squeezed through the narrow maze toward the cab, hid between a refrigerator and an armoire. He took off his shirt and pressed it against his cut and battered face. Would he have awful scars? Would his face be ugly now?

Thirty seconds later, the truck door slid shut, plunging him into darkness.

He heard footsteps on the loading dock, security men asking questions about two men running through the store, the truck driver saying he’d been standing here the whole time, he’d seen nothing.

Jackie waited, to see if the doors would open or if the truck would take him.

After another minute, the truck’s engine roared to life, moved forward out of the bay.

Escape was escape. But this was humiliation, running, losing to a nobody like Ben Forsberg. As he bounced in the darkness, he imagined Ben’s face gaping in terror, dying slow on his knife’s point, screaming like the cowards in the Belfast basement. The bloodied smile seemed tattooed on Jackie’s face.

25

Bob Taggart’s den appeared to be a bizarre hybrid of a gun show and a used bookstore. Tall bookshelves covered one wall, jammed full with tattered paperbacks and battered hardcovers. Another wall featured a collection of antique firearms mixed in with newer guns. Bright yellow squares of Post-it notes lay beneath several of the mounted guns. Vochek could see notes penciled on the squares of color. The handwriting was as precise as the characters of a typewriter. Stacks of books towered from the floor, volumes on history and weaponry and guns.

“I’m working on a book on firearms,” Bob Taggart said. “I’m on the ninth draft of my outline. I’m being very methodical in how I approach my work.”

“I admire that,” she said. She leaned closer, looked at the guns. A French pistol from 1878. A German revolver from 1915. A police special from Prohibition-era Chicago.

“If they could talk,” he said. “Other than spitting bullets.”

“We’d be out of our jobs.”

He laughed, a rich, warm sound. Taggart was a short man, heavyset, with a silver burr of hair cut into a retro flattop. He had a warm and ingratiating smile. He had his hands behind his back and he rocked on the balls of his feet, beaming at his guns. Vochek gave his fingers a quick inspection as he pointed out the beauty of an antique firearm from Prussia: no wedding ring. She wondered if maybe Mom would like Taggart, wondered if he ever made his way to Houston.

“You truly have quite a collection,” Vochek said.

“I’m mindful about my purchases. I research them. I’m careful and methodical.”

She wondered if he was preemptively defending his work on the Emily Forsberg case before she asked a single question. He offered her iced tea, she accepted, and he got them their drinks. He settled into a recliner; she sat on the couch across from him.

“I’m not sure how I can help you,” he said. “The lead investigators were in Maui. I only did questioning here of people in Dallas in support of the Hawaiian investigation. Everything on the murder was in the file. The case remains open.”

“But cold.”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re the closest, so I’m talking to you first, but I’m sure we’ll be talking with the investigators in Maui as well. I read the file. You were, indeed, very methodical and careful.”

Taggart shrugged. “Not that I made much of a difference for Emily Forsberg.”

She heard bitterness under his words. “I’d just like your impressions on the case. You can get so much more from talking to an investigating officer than simply reading the file.”

“You get all my prejudices and theories.” He smiled.

“I’ll take those,” she said.

“And this is because you want to find Ben Forsberg.”

“Yes. We found a link between Forsberg and a known hired killer. I want to find out how strong the link is and how long ago it was forged.”

“You mean, did he use a hired killer to get rid of his wife?”

“Yes.”

Taggart frowned. “I suppose anything is possible.”

“What did you think of Ben?”

“As a suspect or a person?”

“Both.”

“I did not talk with him until he returned to Dallas. So, you understand, I did not see him in the immediate aftermath of his wife’s death, which is when you can learn the most about a suspect’s emotional reaction to the crime. He’d had a few days to compose himself, to deal with the shock of her death. He was… There’s a phrase I used in my career. Devastated but dignified.”

“He does have a reserve about him,” she said.